


You Too Will Fall Away (From All These Useless Fears And Chains)

by LadyofAvalon



Series: The Scars Give It All Away [4]
Category: Bourne Legacy (2012), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Clint Barton is Aaron Cross, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 03:32:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/882450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyofAvalon/pseuds/LadyofAvalon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By the time the sun starts to come up, she knows the stories of William Brandt, Brian Gamble, William James, and Jason Walsh. It surprises her, because she thought she knew everything about him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Too Will Fall Away (From All These Useless Fears And Chains)

They are falling in three acts: they fell together, fell in love, and then they fell apart. She fell alone.

Natasha was used to being alone before. Then _he_ waltzed into her life, all Midwestern cowboy. His absence has left a gaping hole in her life. She used to think she was unshakable. She knows better now.

The helicarrier seems empty without Clint by her side. She misses his easy smile and his stability. By forcing his way into her life like he did in Budapest has made it impossible for her to forget him. It would be easy for her to say that they were inseparable, but that was hardly the case. Strike Team Delta was a team with vastly different skillsets – she had always been the one who got close and personal while Clint watched from a distance. (He saw better from a distance, he had always said. That was why he saved her. He refused to see the monster, the murderer. He just offered her his hand and she never looked back.)

Now she is alone. Completely and utterly alone. Clint is gone. Phil is in critical condition. (If Phil did not live, no one would be able to handle Maria spiraling out of control when they lost him. Not when she is the steadiest of any of the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) There is an unnatural echo in the helicarrier. Most of the agents still roam the halls as they had before Loki's attack. She knows without even looking at them that they are glad that Clint is gone. Even if it was not him that did all that killing (the blood is on Loki's hands, after all), they still feel better knowing that Hawkeye is not there, that he has disappeared. They feel safer. He is the one who lost it when they needed him most – he is the one who killed their friends.

She wonders if that is why he disappeared, but she is not sure if she will ever know exactly what went wrong. It is not like him to run like this. It is not like him to be a coward. Clint had had so many opportunities to run before, but he never had. Natasha did not understand what made this time quite so different. He had blood on his hands before, the blood of innocents (the agents who had died at his hand were hardly numbered among the innocents) that had been unavoidable collateral damage. (He had always carried that grief with him. He had known that there was nothing he could do, more often than not.)

Without Clint, she loses her rhythm. Two nearly botched missions later (they would never have been trouble if he had been there), she is on desk duty. The paperwork is boring and she finds herself wandering the hallways more often than not. (She ends up in the catwalks more than she is willing to admit. Clint always liked it up there.)

The facial recognition software is of no help. She has set it to scan for Clint Barton three times and it comes up with nothing every time. (She cannot help but wonder if that means he is dead. She pushes the thought away when her throat tightens.)

It is only when she goes looking through the files in search of his that she finds that it is not there. There is no file where Clint's file should be. There is no Clint Barton in any of the databases. It is like he never existed in the first place.

That is when she pulls out the photo she keeps in a drawer in her quarters. It takes two hours before it comes up with something – it is unlike him to slip up, but she is grateful. The traffic camera that catches his face as he leans against the left armrest a stoplight is al she needs to start searching. The license plate on the car indicates that it belongs to one William Brandt. (She finds that William Brandt died during a mission with IMF – the Impossible Missions Force – almost a decade ago, but the grainy shot of him looks suspiciously like her partner.) William Brandt's file hardly tells her anything, but she knows that their records have been tampered with. With her security clearance, she should have access to everything, but there is no more in the file. There should be more with his five year tenure with IMF. She does not know how she has found these files – files that should not be there, files that she has never seen before, files that do not make sense – but they are useful.

When she runs facial recognition again, she finds more. Brian Gamble. William James. Jason Walsh. The files are all fragmented – the pieces do not even fit together. Natasha does not even know how they came up in her search. It seems as though most of it is sheer dumb luck, but she is grateful for it.

It does not take her long to track down another name. Karl Brundage, on a plane to the Philippines not three hours ago. Natasha only pauses for a moment before she pulls everything in the search onto a tablet and starts digging as she moves. She says three words to Fury and he sends her after Clint without a second thought. (Even though they both know that she is compromised, it has to be her.) Even if she does not bring him back, he is an asset. (And although she is not willing to admit it, he is a liability.) They cannot afford to lose him to someone else. She cannot afford to lose him. Not again.

She arrives in Manila in the middle of the night. The time on the jet was enough for her to prepare, to find a way to blend in like a tourist. Her hair is darker again (just like it was when she was babysitting Stark) and just as long. She has it pulled back into a messy ponytail and has exchanged her catsuit for civilian clothes. (It almost feels like old times, but she knows that it is not.)

All is quiet.

Instead of searching for him – she knows he would never be on the street at night when he was running; it was always too easy to get caught that way – she digs into the files on her tablet, devouring everything that came up on her search. By the time the sun starts to come up, she knows the stories of William Brandt, Brian Gamble, William James, and Jason Walsh. It surprises her, because she thought she knew everything about him. (She read his file once, back when she thought she knew him. Apparently she was wrong. She never really did know who he was.)

She leaves as soon as the sun starts to come up. She goes after every single sign that he might have been there. The information on her tablet tells her that he was in a factory in the middle of the night. (What he could want there is beyond her, but nothing can surprise her anymore.)

All she gets for her trouble is a near-death experience with a bus and the knowledge that he got away. And there was someone with him.

It should be beyond Natasha to be jealous; she has always been able to control those emotions for the sake of the mission. (She can remember the feel of his hands on her, his lips on hers – the memories of what they were together are warm and sweet. This is not a mission. This is Clint.)

The body and the two motorcycles are enough to tell her that something is very wrong. (As if it wasn't wrong enough before.)

(She is so numb as she walks away – she always says that love is for children, but she knows that she is lying to herself. She loves him and it terrifies her.)

There is silence after Manila. Complete radio silence from Clint – he is off the grid all over again. He was always good at that.

It takes what seems like forever to find him in Singapore, but he is in the wind before she even has a chance to lay eyes on him. It is months before she finds him in Hong Kong.

The man she sees in Hong Kong is different. He is like a caged animal, ready to spring at whatever provokes it. He does not even notice her for the first week she is there. She watches the apartment he shares with the woman he is running with.

The first thing Natasha does is identify the woman Clint is with. Dr. Marta Shearing proves to be exactly what Natasha is looking for. Less than six months before, Shearing was accused of taking things from her work after a shooting that left all of her coworkers dead.

If there is one thing Natasha is grateful for, it is her security clearance and her ability to hack into databases that she should probably not have access to. Digging into the files behind Marta Shearing is easy. The doctor was the perfect lead-in to an intricate web of lies and secrets that all led to the Jason Bourne fiasco that had had Maria worked up about for nearly a week. Operation Treadstone is only the beginning.

It is nearly dawn when she reaches the end of the extensive notes on the Treadstone and Blackbriar projects. Then something catches her attention. Operation Outcome.

It is just a hunch, but Natasha's hunches are more often correct than not. She is right. Outcome is the start of something more.

That is where she finds him.

Aaron Cross. Outcome-5. The National Research Assay Group.

There is too much for her to keep processing. Aaron Cross's file is by far the most intricate and the only whole file she has been able to examine. What it gives her is more than enough.

She does not know whether to be angry or to cry when she is done. Everything she knows is a lie. There is no Clint Barton. There never was. It is just Aaron Cross – Kenneth Kitsom.

Now she understands. Everything clicks into place. She is numb, hardly able to feel what she knows is a terrible pain in her heart. She loves him. Natasha Romanoff loves Clint Barton, but Clint Barton does not exist. It was an act; she wonders how much of what they had was real.

She keeps following him. Three days later, their eyes meet and he bolts. She watches the apartment he shares with Marta Shearing instead. (She knows that Marta is playing June Monroe now. Once upon a time, they were June and James Monroe. That was a long time ago.)

She watches as they run. When they speed away from her on his motorcycle, she can feel her heart aching. It is only once they are out of sight that she turns back with the intent to search their apartment.

The apartment is clean, save for a piece of paper sitting on their kitchen table. _Natasha_ , it reads in his familiar scrawl. She reaches out to pick it up and opens it.

_If you've followed the trail here, you know everything. I'm sorry. I can't be him anymore._

_Aaron Cross_

She surveys the empty apartment, her jaw tight. The silence greets her like an old friend. She will not accept life after Clint Barton because life after him is too much like life before him. Life before Clint Barton was a terrible thing.


End file.
